Tata Power to invest Rs70,000 crore to raise capacity eightfold

Tata Power plans to invest Rs70,000 crore to reach its targeted installed capacity of 25,000 mw by 2017, chairman Ratan Tata said at the company’s annual general meeting here on Wednesday.

The company has an operational capacity of 2,977 mw, the largest for a private sector generator in the country.

Analysts said the company’s plans look too ambitious. DK Aggarwal, chairman of SMC Wealth Management Services in New Delhi, said, “tying up such funds may be a concern because it will require a lot of debt in only a short span of seven years”.

Tata Power recently bagged a 240 mw geothermal power project in Indonesia in consortium with Australia’s Origin Energy and PT Supraco Indonesia.

The company plans to venture into nuclear power when it is opened to the private sector and also into solar power (It plans to set up solar facilities with a capacity of 300 megawatts by 2013).
It has 200 mw of operating wind-power capacity in Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka and has placed an order for 150 mw of additional capacity to be set up in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, according to an August 12 statement.

Among Tata Power’s plants under construction is the 4,000 mw coal-based ultra mega power project (UMPP) at Mundra in Gujarat. “About 60% of the project is complete,” Ratan Tata said.
Tata Power managing director Prasad Menon said the company has 5,570 mw in the construction phase, including the UMPP and the 1,050 mw plant at Maithon in Jharkhand. With agency inputs